Global billionaires tax to fight climate change, hunger rises up political agenda

(Climate Home News, 19 Apr 2024) The finance ministers of Brazil and France pushed this week for a tax on US-dollar billionaires of at least 2% of their wealth each year, with the $250 billion it could raise going to tackle poverty, hunger and climate change.

Brazil’s Fernando Haddad and France’s Bruno Le Maire promoted their proposal at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, alongside IMF head Kristalina Georgieva and Kenyan finance minister Njuguna Ndung’u.

“In a world where economic activities are increasingly transnational, we have to find new and creative ways to tax these activities [and] thus direct the revenues to common global endeavours such as ending hunger and poverty and fighting climate change,” said Haddad.

He called on world leaders to show “political courage”, embrace “innovative solutions based on evidence” and give their people “hope”. “Without courage, there’s no good politics that can be done,” he said.

Speaking next at a briefing in Washington, Le Maire said overhauling the taxation system was “a matter of efficiency and a matter of justice”, and that a levy on the super-rich should follow already-agreed measures for a digital tax and global minimum corporation tax. “Everybody has to pay his fair share of taxation,” he added.

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Climate Home News, 19 Apr 2024: Global billionaires tax to fight climate change, hunger rises up political agenda